Chapter 7: WORK DESIGN AND MEASUREMENT

Four major sections: job design, quality of work life, methods analysis, and work measurement.
The importance of work design is underscored by an organization’s dependence on human
efforts (i.e., work) to accomplish its goals

Job design involves specifying the content and methods of jobs.

Job designers focus:

• what will be done in a job
• who will do the job
• how the job will be done
• where the job will be done.

Objectives:

Productivity, safety, and quality of work life.

Two elements of basic schools of thought:

 Efficiency school because it emphasizes a systematic, logical approach to job design
refinement of Frederick Winslow Taylor’s scientific management concepts, received
considerable emphasis in the past. The behavioral approach followed and has continued
to make inroads into many aspects of job design. It is noteworthy that specialization is a
primary issue of disagreement between the efficiency and behavioral approaches.
 Behavioral school because it emphasizes satisfaction of wants and needs.

Specialization
 describes jobs that have a very narrow scope.
 ability to concentrate one’s efforts and thereby become proficient at that
type of work.

Highly specialized jobs

high productivity and relatively low unit costs

Lower-level jobs
monotonous or downright boring, and are the source of much of the
dissatisfaction among many industrial workers.

Behavioral Approaches to Job Design

Job enlargement
a. means giving a worker a larger portion of the total task.
 b. This constitutes horizontal loading—the additional work is on the same level of skill and
responsibility as the original job.
c. The goal is to make the job more interesting by increasing the variety of skills required
and by providing the worker with a more recognizable contribution to the overall
output.
d. For example, a production worker’s job might be expanded so that he or she is
responsible for a sequence of activities instead of only one activity.
Job rotation
a. means having workers periodically exchange jobs.
b. A firm can use this approach to avoid having one or a few employees stuck in
monotonous jobs.
c. It works best when workers can be transferred to more interesting jobs;
d. there is little advantage in having workers exchange one boring job for another.
e. Job rotation allows workers to broaden their learning experience and enables them to
fill in for others in the event of sickness or absenteeism.
Job enrichment
a. involves an increase in the level of responsibility for planning and coordination tasks.
b. It is sometimes referred to as vertical loading.
c. An example of this is to have stock clerks in supermarkets handle reordering of goods,
thus increasing their responsibilities.
d. The job enrichment approach focuses on the motivating potential of worker satisfaction.

For Management: For employees:

1. Simplifies training 1. Low education and skill requirements
2. High productivity 2. Minimum responsibilities
3. Low wage costs 3. Little mental effort needed
For management:
For employees:
Difficult to motivate quality
Monotonous work
Worker dissatisfaction, possibly resulting in
Limited opportunities for advancement
absentee-
Little control over work
ism, high turnover, disruptive tactics, poor
Little opportunity for self-fulfillment
attention to quality

Motivation
 reasons include socialization, self-actualization, status, the physiological aspects of
work, and a sense of purpose and accomplishment.
Teams
 The efforts of business organizations to become more productive, competitive, and
customer- oriented have caused them to rethink how work is accomplished.

Different forms of teams

short-term team - formed to collaborate on a topic such as quality
improvement, product or service design, or solving a problem.
 Long term – used especially in lean production settings, is the self-directed team.

Self-directed teams
 sometimes referred to as self-managed teams
 workers, who are close to the process and have the best knowledge of it, are better
suited than management to make the most effective changes to improve the
process

Benefits:
- One is that fewer managers are necessary
- very often one manager can handle several teams
- can provide improved responsiveness to problems, they have a personal stake
in making the process work, and they require less time to implement
improvements.
- higher quality, higher productivity, and greater worker satisfaction.
- higher levels of employee satisfaction can lead to less turn- over and
absenteeism, resulting in lower costs to train new workers and less need to fill in
for absent employees.

Expert Robert Bacal has a list of requirements for successful team building:
1. Clearly stated and commonly held vision and goals.
2. Talent and skills required to meet goals.
3. Clear understanding of team members’ roles and functions.
4. Efficient and shared understanding of procedures and norms.
5. Effective and skilled interpersonal relations.
6. A system of reinforcement and celebration.
7. Clear understanding of the team’s relationship to the greater organization.

Ergonomics
 scientific discipline concerned with the understand- ing of interactions among
humans and other elements of a system, and the profession that applies theory,
principles, data, and methods to design in order to optimize human well-being and
overall system performance

Three domains
- physical (e.g., repetitive movements, layout, health, and safety)
- cognitive (mental workload, decision making, human–computer interaction, and work
stress)
- organizational (e.g., communication, teamwork, work design, and telework).

“Frederick Winslow Taylor, known as the father of scientific management, found that the
amount of coal that workers could shovel could be increased substantially by reducing the size
and weight of the shovels. “
QUALITY OF WORK LIFE
 Quality of work life affects not only workers’ overall sense of well-being and
contentment, but also worker productivity.

Working Conditions
 temperature (the more strenuous the work, the lower the comfort range.)
 humidity
 ventilation
 illumination (the more detailed the work, the higher the level of illumination needed
for adequate performance )
 noise
 Work Time and Work Breaks
 Occupational Health Care.
 Safety.
causes of accidents are worker carelessness and accident hazards
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), emphasized the
importance of safety considerations in systems design
 Ethical Issues.
working conditions and employee safety, accurate record keeping, unbiased
performance appraisals, fair compensation, and opportunities for advancement.

Compensation
Time-based systems,
 also known as hourly and measured daywork systems, compensate employees for
the time the employee has worked during a pay period. Salaried workers also
represent a form of time- based compensation.
 In the case of assembly lines, the use of individual incentives could disrupt the even
flow of work; however, group incentives are sometimes used successfully in such
cases.

Output-based (incentive) systems

 compensate employees according to the amount of output they produce during a
pay period, thereby tying pay directly to performance.

Knowledge-Based Pay Systems

Organizations are increasingly recognizing this, and they are setting up pay systems to reward
workers who undergo training that increases their skill levels.
Horizontal skills reflect the variety of tasks the worker is capable of performing
Vertical skills reflect managerial tasks the worker is capable of
Depth skills reflect quality and productivity results.
METHODS ANALYSIS

 Analyzing how a job is done.

 done for both existing jobs and new jobs

- For a new job it is needed to establish a method. the analyst must rely on a job
description and an ability to visualize the operation.

- For an existing job the procedure usually is to have the analyst observe the job as
it is currently being performed and then devise improvements.

Different sources:
- Changes in tools and equipment
- changes in product design or introduction of new products
- changes in materials or procedures,
- government regulations or contractual agreements
- incidents such as accidents and quality problems.

Basic procedure
1. Identify the operation to be studied, and gather all pertinent facts about tools,
equipment, materials, and so on.
2. For existing jobs, discuss the job with the operator and supervisor to get their input.
3. Study and document the present method of an existing job using process charts. For
new jobs, develop charts based on information about the activities involved.
4. Analyze the job.
5. Propose new methods.
6. Install the new methods.
7. Follow up implementation to assure that improvements have been achieved.

Flow process charts

 are used to review and critically examine the overall sequence of an operation by
focusing on the movements of the operator or the flow of materials.

OPERATION
 Drive nail
  Mix
 Computer/Word processing
 Requisition made out by department head
 amount approved by treasurer, cashier, bookkeeper
 Receipt signed

TRANSPORTATION
 Move material by cart, conveyor
 Move material by carrying (messenger)
 To accounting department
 Petty cash carried to department

STORAGE
 Raw material bulk in storage
 Finished stacked on pallets
 Protective filling of documents
 Petty cash stored in safety box

DELAY
 Wait for elevator
 Material in truck or floor at bench
 Papers waiting to be filed
 Put in “pick-up” basket

INSEPECTION
 Examine material for quality or quantity
 Read steam gauge on boiler
 Examine printed from for information
  account and signature verified
 petty cash check against requisition

Worker-machine chart
 Chart used to determine portions of a work cycle during which an operator and
equipment are busy or idle.

Motion study
 is the systematic study of the human motions used to perform an operation. The
purpose is to eliminate unnecessary motions and to identify the best sequence of
motions for maximum efficiency from the work of Frank Gilbreth

Motion study principles

- principles for use of the body,
- principles for arrangement of the workplace
- principles for the design of tools and equipment.

Therbligs
 Basic elemental motions that make up a job.
Example:
Search implies hunting for an item with the hands and/or the eyes. Select means
to choose from a group of objects.
Grasp means to take hold of an object.
Hold refers to retention of an object after it has been grasped.
Transport load means movement of an object after hold.
Release load means to deposit the object.

Work measurement
 concerned with determining the length of time it should take to complete the job.

Standard time
 The time it should take a fully trained and qualified worker to complete a specific
task, working at an efficient, yet sustainable pace, using specific methods, tools and
equipment, raw materials, and workplace arrangement.

Methods of work measurement

(1) stopwatch time study,
(2) historical times,
(3) predetermined data, and
(4) work sampling
 CHAPTER 8: LOCATION PLANNING AND ANALYSIS

Location choices can impact capacity and flexibility.

Objectives of Location Decisions

Profit-oriented organizations
 base their decisions on profit potential
Nonprofit organizations
 strive to achieve a balance between cost and the level of customer service they
provide.

Location criteria can depend on where a business is in the supply chain.

- At the retail end of a chain - site selection tends to focus more on accessibility,
consumer demographics (population density, age distribution, average buyer income),
traffic patterns, and local customs.
- At the beginning of a supply chain, if they are involved in supplying raw materials, are
often located near the source of the raw materials.
- In the middle of the chain may locate near suppliers or near their markets, depending
on a variety of circumstances.

Supply Chain Consideration

Centralized distribution
 generally yields scale economies as well as tighter control than Decentralized
distribution, but it sometimes incurs higher transportation costs.
Decentralized distribution
 tends to be more responsive to local needs.

Four options in location planning

1. Expand an existing facility
2. Add new locations while retaining existing ones
3. Shut down at one location and move to another
4. Do nothing

GLOBAL LOCATIONS

Facilitating Factors
1. Trade Agreements
 Barriers to international trade such as tariffs and quotas have been reduced or
eliminated with trade agreements
Includes:
 NAFTA, GATT, U.S – China Trade Relations Act

2. Technology
 include faxing capability, e-mail, cell phones, teleconferencing, and the Internet.

Benefits
 Markets
 Cost savings
 Legal and regulatory
 Financial

Disadvantages
 Transportation costs
 Security costs
 Unskilled labor.
 Import restrictions
 Criticisms
 Productivity

Risks
 Political
 Terrorism.
 Economic
 Legal
 Ethical
 Cultural
 Quality